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Twitter and Facebook's action over Joe Biden article reignites bias claims

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Re: Twitter and Facebook's action over Joe Biden article reignites bias claims

#101

Post by hackinthebochs »

TheAdamAndChe wrote: post #77
hackinthebochs wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have been pretty vocal about being against censorship from social media companies. But with the stakes being as high as they are this close to an election (not just this particular election, but any election in general), I see no problem with social media companies deciding they will not be a party to the spread of misinformation intended to sway the election. These companies are not neutral communication platforms…

The entire purpose of a campaign is to manipulate the outcome of an election. A rally manipulates the outcome, as does a debate. As does a news article that raises question about one of the candidate's integrity.

No. "Manipulate" in this context carries the connotation of unscrupulous control. The purpose of a campaign is to demonstrate to voters that you're the best person for the job. There is no need for "manipulation" to accomplish this. Manipulation is used to convince people to vote for you despite the truth.

Re: Twitter and Facebook's action over Joe Biden article reignites bias claims

#102

Post by [deleted] »

convery wrote: post #17

European here, but I can definitively see how someone would come to that conclusion. Both platforms bans anyone mentioning the supposed "whistleblower" (whom actually only had newspaper articles as 'evidence'), bans anyone mentioning Bidens kid, bans anyone mentioning the death of Clintons ex-staffers, Wikileaks content related to Dems is blacklisted, and they remove videos of Bidens gaffes for being "manipulative" w…

[deleted]

Re: Twitter and Facebook's action over Joe Biden article reignites bias claims

#103

Post by svrb »

sleepysysadmin wrote: post #40
jchw wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, if it is false, then they are performing the stated goal of stopping the spread of “fake news”, which need not discriminate on whether the entity pushing it is associated with a government or not. Whether or not I want Twitter to be an arbiter of truth, some very basic research does seem to make it seem this story is a bit on the order of a conspiracy theory.

Follow up. Twitter has come out saying they blocked this because of personal identifying information. Not because it's false, fake, or a conspiracy.

Which is odd, since they've also made definitive claims that they blocked it because it's "hacked" and yet more definitive claims that they blocked it because it's "leaked". They can't even get their story straight; and with their audience who will support their every move, they don't need to.

Re: Twitter and Facebook's action over Joe Biden article reignites bias claims

#104

Post by jedimastert »

taxicab wrote: post #23

The story reeks from top to bottom. The owner of the repair shop that allegedly received the laptop from Biden is a super far right conspiracy theorist. To the point where he literally believes that the Clintons are out to kill him for the information he has [1]. The whole story is that this is Hunter Biden's laptop, but in reality some random dude dropped it off and the owner said that "he had a medical condition th…

> even though it's most likely false, by the time it has flown around the internet unimpeded the damage will have already been done.

"A lie can travel around the world and back again while the truth is lacing up its boots." — Mark Twain

Re: Twitter and Facebook's action over Joe Biden article reignites bias claims

#106

Post by zalkota »

Here's a list of various hoaxes/leaks/etc. that the big tech social media companies allowed and did not censor, even though they took action in this instance: https://thefederalist.com/2020/10/15/11-hacks-leaks-and-hoax... This list seems like strong proof that the we cannot trust these social media companies to be neutral actors. They shouldn't be given controlling power to the digital public square.

Re: Twitter and Facebook's action over Joe Biden article reignites bias claims

#107

Post by stvswn »

cowmoo728 wrote: post #97
taxicab wrote: post #23

The story reeks from top to bottom. The owner of the repair shop that allegedly received the laptop from Biden is a super far right conspiracy theorist. To the point where he literally believes that the Clintons are out to kill him for the information he has [1]. The whole story is that this is Hunter Biden's laptop, but in reality some random dude dropped it off and the owner said that "he had a medical condition th…

A modern macbook pro has a T2 security chip and disk encryption on by default. It's possible that a random repair shop owner could read your emails if you turn off disk encryption or disable password auth, but that's even more far fetched. edited It seems this particular mac doesn't have the T2 chip. It would still have disk encryption on by default.

I thought of this. The serial number of the laptop is included in the grand jury summons docs released by the New York Post. The serial number can be used to lookup the model. It was a mid-2017 macbook pro, the T2 chip started shipping in 2018 models.

Re: Twitter and Facebook's action over Joe Biden article reignites bias claims

#108

Post by cowmoo728 »

goodluckchuck wrote: post #74
cowmoo728 wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder if FB and Twitter are in contact with some of the national intelligence agencies. US intelligence officials talking to NYT suggest that this "leak" is a forgery by the GRU. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/14/us/politics/hunter-biden-...

So, you're listening to the people to said Iraq had WMDs?

I don't take anything the three letter agencies say at face value. But if I were Twitter leadership and legal and I got a call from the CIA or NSC saying my platform is being used right now for a massive GRU disinformation campaign, I would panic and attempt to shut it down.

Re: Twitter and Facebook's action over Joe Biden article reignites bias claims

#109

Post by naiveprogrammer »

wwright wrote: post #91
naiveprogrammer wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The media has been pedaling the Russian collusion story for 4 years and you don't seem to care because it fits your priors and political agenda. The bigger lesson here is that everybody is ready to accept censorship as long as they are not bearing the (immediate) costs of it.

Well, multiple members of the Trump campaign have literally pleaded guilty to lying about involvement with Russia; that story does have that going for it :)

You'd think that after 4 years of intense scrutiny by the media, with a 2-year Special Counsel Investigation, people would finally let this go. If you don't see the parallel between this pipe dream and the QAnons of the world, I can't help you.

Re: Twitter and Facebook's action over Joe Biden article reignites bias claims

#110

Post by turtleturtle »

zpeti wrote: post #71
dkackman11 wrote: post #48

Maybe getting rid of professional journalism, and crowd sourcing the news via secret algorithms, isn't such a great idea after all...

We as consumers should be valuing real journalism and actually paying money for it. Otherwise this carries on going downhill. Journalism, at least some of it, should not be about clicks and sound bites.

The idea of free journalism sounds great until it's all ad driven and click bait-y. A digital news subscription cost less than $1 daily and it's still a challenge to convince people to commit to one. I'm glad some long form journalists are moving to substack.
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